kawasaki heavy industries--doohickeys, brakes, dealer screwups

[Jeffrey]

Though once you do a couple of fixes, the KLRs are great dual sport bikes but Kawasaki sure hasn't been very responsive. Instead of all that street queen stuff they did on the post 07s, they should have just added a 6th gear. They did fix the brakes post 07. The doohickeys are obviously a huge real problem and they never actually completely fixed the issue. They get away with it because the doohickey problem usually won't blow up the motor till it is over 25,000 miles--long after the warranty expires. But, if this happens on the fwy at high speed or in the middle of nowhere, it could be a disaster. The pre08 front brakes were atrocious. I now know how bad they were because now I have an EBC over sized contour rotor and a Galfer Stainless Steel front brake line. While either once of these on its own would have made the pre08 brakes acceptable for the street; STOCK THEY WERE NOT! Now I have mostly one or two finger front braking. Before I would have to squeeze the shit out of it on pavement which is very tricky in a dangerous situation because though the rear brakes weren't that great you had plenty of leverage with your foot to lock them. My KLR came with the rear blinkers crossed wired which was a real hazard till I caught it. The more common dealer screw up is the forks are not positioned correctly in the triple clamps. Sony, Toyota, Kawasaki have gotten lazy. Korean Hyundai and Kia are gaining market share in the car markets since their quality has improved tremendously but they don't make dual sport motos. J#3

[Andrus]

A few months back when restoring my '00 KLR I installed LED signal lamps instead of buying used or new stockers. I ended up having to order a flasher from the same people I had bought the lamps from to get it working in that direction. If remembered, I installed some diodes from radio shack to keep one side from grounding to the other side. Well , this all failed finally from the heat at the diodes melting the tape. So, I decided to go one better and install an LED light for each side mounting on the panel under the fairing. So purchase two amber super bright leds with a little mounting cup for them. Took everything apart and just twisted wires to try the theory out. Success! So, drilled holes, installed cups and leds with a touch of super glue to make sure all stays where I put it. run wiring and connected to OEM signal lights ground side to LED input side. LED grounds to instrument ground. Button everything up and back together. Success! Looks pretty kewl also. Now, I have an LED signal indicator light for each side more in my line of vision just above the speedo/tach line of sight.